LEARN FROM THE SKUNK

Some days you eat the tuna
and other days you don’t.

The recriminations started on the drive home after the long trip offshore to catch tuna and maybe a white marlin with nothing to show for our efforts. Questions filled my head. Did we have the most recent information about fish activity? Did we have the right tackle, lures and baits? When we arrived at the area we chose should we have left sooner or stayed longer? Were other boats doing better in other areas? The list grew progressively longer as I replayed the entire trip, from preparation to on-the-water decisions, in my head.

Every angler regardless of what he fishes for has run up against that brick wall when no matter what you did you got skunked. You thought you did everything right and fished your heart out and ended up with nothing to show for it. This time the trip was from New Jersey’s Barnegat Inlet offshore to the Carteret/Lindenkohl Canyon area 85 miles offshore to fish for tuna. We left a 2 AM after spending hours rigging ballyhoo baits, checking rods and reels, going over the lures, extra leader, rigging components and provisioning the boat with food, drink and ice. We had the latest offshore fishing forecast including the most recent satellite sea surface temperature chart, which we used to pick our spots. We had current intel from several captains who had been out in the prior days and factored that into our decisions.

The temperature break and deep blue water was there when we arrived a little after first light. We marked pods of bait on the depthfinder along the break. It was a text book situation for attracting game fish. The only things missing were the tuna and white marlin…duh…the most important part of the trip. By the time we got back to the dock eighteen hours later we had put a total of 260 miles on the boat running out and back and searching different offshore ar`eas for fish and nada!

Was it disappointing? Sure, but I’ll survive. What does not kill me only makes me stronger and in fishing every trip is an opportunity to learn. Was it the first time I’ve been skunked? No. Will it be the last time? Probably not. So can we take away from the experience? Well you might be surprised, but there are times when you can learn more on a skunk trip than if you had some action! And the day was certainly not wasted.

Don’t put yourself in the dog house
when you don’t catch, learn from the experience.

First and foremost, we had the delightful experience of spending a gorgeous day on the water away from stress with a few good friends who share the same interests—fishing. We got to see whales and porpoises, water so blue it was almost a religious experience, and we matched wits with a sometime elusive quarry that we just didn’t fool this time out. As I analyzed the trip I know we didn’t leave much to chance, but there were some back up plans that could have been in place that might have increased our chances of hooking up. Maybe we were a little over confident when we left the dock.

Some after action investigation calls to other boats that were in the same general area provided a few answers, but we found that we were certainly not alone in our defeat. Very few boats had caught fish that day, although the same areas produced a lot of yellowfin tuna the afternoon and evening before.

Just remember that sport fishing is 

not a zero sum game. If you have to catch fish every time you go out to enjoy yourself you probably will not be fishing for very long because you just don’t have the demeanor for it. I learned a long time ago that true fishermen are the most optimistic people in the world because every time they go out they are confident that it’s a new day and they are going to catch fish—even after a trip like the one we just took when we never did seem to get the skunk get out of the boat. I know it’s not going to keep me from heading offshore a gain very soon—maybe tomorrow.

Caputi’s Blog Tip: Make every trip a learning experience and a valuable asset in the future by keeping a fishing log. As your fishing trips mount and the log grows referring back to it can help you catch more fish as you begin to recognize patterns of fish behavior.  

Fluorocarbon Leaders: Are they all they’re cracked up to be?

With a few spools of fluorocarbon,
an assortment of hooks, swivels and beads
I can make bait rigs for anything on the spot. 

I remember the first time I was shown fluorocarbon line. It was at the annual sportfishing trade show, which was held in Orlando, Florida that year, and the product was still a year away from general distribution. Rumor had it that it was developed by a Japanese industrialist who was using the material for other applications, but he was also a nut fisherman so he tried extruding it into fishing line.

In its earliest formulations fluorocarbon made lousy line, but one of the properties of the material was interesting. The refractive index was almost identical to water, which meant that it nearly disappears when submerged and that is a benefit for fishermen. So if it was too stiff to be good running line, but was nearly invisible to fish the only option was to offer it as a high priced leader material and that was exactly what it was marketed as. When it hit the stores it was still very stiff. Anything over 50-lb test was difficult to tie knots in and therefore hard to join to mono or braided line, but fishermen like me will try anything that gives them an advantage and it didn’t take long to realize that fluorocarbon did. There was no question that I got more bites using a few feet of fluorocarbon on the end of my line than I did using monofilament leader whether it was clear or tinted.

Fluoro makes bucktails more
effective and this nice fluke is ample proof. 

Fluorocarbon has come a long way since then and the state of the art is Hi-Seas 100% Fluorocarbon and the new Quattro Fluorocarbon. In lighter pound tests it is soft enough to use as running line and freshwater bass fishermen do. They spool reels with 12, 15 and 25-lb. test for fishing finesse baits and sinking lures like plastic worms and tie direct to their lures. Fluorocarbon sinks and has less stretch than monofilament, which tends to float, so using it for sinking baits gives them a more realistic presentation, added sensitivity and improved hook set.

But how about fluorocarbon as leader material, does it really do what they claim? The simple answer is yes! From my experience fluorocarbon provides a distinct advantage in clear and not so clear water and even at night! I’ve proven it to myself so many times fishing mono leaders alongside fluorocarbon leaders and watching the results that I rarely ever fish without the fluorocarbon advantage. Invisibility is not the only advantage fluorocarbon provides. The latest generation is softer and easier to tie with testable knot strength as good or better than mono, it is also incredibly abrasion resistant. It’s just the best all round leader materials you can use. If you’re not using HI-Seas 100% Fluorocarbon or the new Quattro 100% Fluorocarbon you are missing out on bites and that’s a fact. 

You won’t jig many sharp-eyed bluefin
tuna with fluorocarbon leaders. 

Caputi’s Blog Tip: Attach fluorocarbon leaders to mono using a Uni-to-Uni knot. For Grand Slam Braid use a No-Name Knot to prevent the finished knot from slipping. For braid use offshore start by tying a 40 turn Bimini Twist in the braid and then tie the fluoro to the braid with the No-Name to create a simple wind-on leader system.

The Ultimate Fishing Destination - Part 2

...continued from July 5

Alaska is a fisherman’s dream come true and a vexing problem all rolled into one. With so many places to go and so many different fisheries to explore where do you start? I began my quest to discover Alaska at the Orca Adventure Lodge in Cordova at the southern entrance to Prince William Sound, where we fished for silver salmon in early September of 2002. We made trips to more remote rivers with famous bush pilot Gayle Rainey. Twelve days of incredible fishing, even more incredible scenery, liking flying over the Bering Glacier, only served to whet my appetite for more.

Next I did a two week driving trip from Anchorage to Talketna to Denali National Park and back to the Kenai and Russian Rivers to fish for wild rainbow trout so I could write a story for Field & Stream called “Rainbow Road Trip.” Most recently I spent a week at Icy Bay Lodge in the most remote area of Alaska’s Lost Coast region. We waded shallow bay waters sight casting to huge silver salmon with Mt. Saint Elias, the second tallest mountain in North American, and four major glaciers as the back drop. The region has the highest concentration of brown bears anywhere in the world. We came around a bend in a heavily wooded trail one morning on an ATV and there was  a huge moose standing on the trail. We would slip off to sleep each night serenaded by the baying of roving packs of wolves while the huge Bull Mastiff, Zeus, kept the bears out of the lodge area during the night. The glacier-fed waters of Icy Bay were the most beautiful color blue I have ever seen and I can see it in my mind’s eye right now.   

If you can only go to one exotic place to fish in your lifetime, make it Alaska. It will be a trip you will remember the rest of your days. The only problem is once you experience this majestic, truly magic place you will want to go back again and again and again. I do.

-Gary Caputi

The Ultimate Fishing Destination - Part 1

If you are thinking about traveling to some exotic fishing location in the near future I have some advice. I know, advice is cheap, but travel is not and if you’re going to spend the money you want to catch lots of fish, view remarkable natural wonders, interact with animals in the wild and come home with pictures and stories to wow your family and friends. Well read on and hopefully you can benefit from my experiences.

I have had the good fortune to fish in a lot of really incredible places over the years. I’ve made dozens of trips to islands in the Bahamas, crossed the Stream in small boats, and fished for marlin, tuna, wahoo, dolphin and stalked the flats for the ghost-like bonefish there. I’ve fished the Keys for tarpon, permit, bonefish and all over Florida for sailfish. My first trip to Venezuela was almost three decades ago and the billfishing on the fabled La Giuria Banks was unbelievable. I’ve fished all the hotspots in Central America, Costa Rica for Pacific sailfish, Panama for sails and black marlin, Guatemala for even more sails and blue marlin. I’ve spent days on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, where I caught my first marlin over 1,000 lbs. I was one of the first East Coasters to travel to California for a trip on the famous Royal Polaris during long-range fishing’s heyday, spending 16 days at sea catching fish to the point of exhaustion! This year I traveled to the remote Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, where the striped marlin were thick as fleas on a junkyard dog and I hope to return there later this year in search of monster blue marlin.

There are more exotic places on the list, but bragging is not my aim. My experience with fishing travel is extensive; especially when you factor in I am not among the moneyed elite who can take such trips on a whim. But when all is said and done the place I have most fallen in love with and daydream about regularly is right here in the good old USA—ALASKA!

You will find no more beautiful, rugged and exotic place on earth. I’ve been there five times and fished for halibut, silver salmon, the biggest rainbow trout in the world, king and sockeye salmon and even salmon sharks, a close relative of the mako. Each trip was ten days to two weeks and included side trips aboard bush planes with some of the best wilderness pilots and fishing guides in the world and I have not even scraped the surface of what this incredible region has to offer visiting sportsman. Most of Alaska is an unspoiled wilderness with bears, moose, caribou, wolves and some of the most amazing characters you’ll ever meet. The Kenai Peninsula is only a two hour drive from Anchorage where you can catch rainbow trout that can reach 20 pounds, king salmon that can top 100 and see brown bears in their natural habitat. There are hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness, millions of miles of streams and rivers, more coastline than the entire East Coast and fish everywhere just waiting to be caught.

...to be continued on July 8

-Gary Caputi

Ultra Light Tackle for Sea Bass

Home port for me is the Manasquan River in Pt. Pleasant, New Jersey. My trusty center console sits in a slip in a small marina about quarter mile from the inlet so I can be in the ocean within minutes of slipping the lines.  From there I have access a variety of bottom and game fish species with the changing seasons that always keeps the fishing interesting.

One of my favorite types of fishing when I just want to relax and catch some fish for the table without working too hard is bottom fishing for fluke and sea bass, both tasty critters. They are also great fish to catch with children or people not too well versed in saltwater fishing. You can fish for them the old fashioned way using sinkers and bottom rigs, but a friend of mine; Tim Surgent – the owner of the popular fishing website Stripersonline.com – introduced me to an even more fun way to catch them a few years ago. He uses ultra light spinning tackle and bucktail jigs.

I remember the first time he showed up with a little freshwater spinning rod loaded with 6-lb test braided line and a box full of bucktails ranging from ¼ to 1-1/2 ounces. I was wondering just what he was going use them for since we would be anchored over a wreck in 75 feet of water fishing for black sea bass. Once we were anchored I took out what I considered light, a baitcasting outfit with 20-lb test Grand Slam Braid and a high-low bait rig with a 3 ounce sinker. As I was baiting up he slipped a strip of squid on the back of a small bucktail and dropped it straight down. When it hit the wreck he reeled up a foot or two and started wiggling the thing around and wham, the rod bent double as a fat sea bass engulfed the jig. It fought like crazy all the way to the surface, where Tim flipped the 3-pound beauty over the rail and into the cooler it went.

He not only out fished me and caught bigger fish to boot! He was having a ball, but little did he know I was sold and the next trip I would be packing a new 5’ ultra light spinning outfit loaded with 6 lb test Wildfire braid and all the small bucktails I had hanging around my tackle bench in the basement. I’ve been an addict ever since.

Some of the things I’ve learned since switching to the tiny tackle is that the super thin braid allows you to get very light jigs to the bottom and feel every twitch and piece of structure it touches. Use a stouter rod and heavier line and those small jigs would probably never make it that deep and would be difficult to feel. The bigger sea bass are aggressive predators and really go for the bucktails, which resemble baitfish. We definitely catch bigger sea bass, and sometimes bigger fluke, on these diminutive outfits and catching them is way more fun because they fight like crazy on the light rods instead of being overmatched by a more typical saltwater tackle.

If you fish for these tasty bottom fish try bringing along a freshwater ultra light outfit next time, but be sure it is filled with very light, very thin braided line. Four or six pound test Wildfire is perfect!

Caputi’s Blog Tip: Sweeten your bucktails. Bring along some squid cut into strips from 2 to 6 inches long. When using longer strips add a stinger hook to the bucktail so you don’t miss short striking fish. “Assist hooks” available at tackle stores make great stingers. 

-Gary Caputi